Lithuania became a member of NATO on April 2 and joined the European Union on May 1. On April 6 Pres. Rolandas Paksas was impeached, with 86 of the 141 members of the Seimas (parliament) voting to remove him from office (85 votes were required). The Constitutional Court confirmed that the president had violated the constitution on at least three occasions, notably when he granted Lithuanian citizenship to a Russian-born financial supporter. Declassified transcripts linked Paksas advisers and major election-campaign donors with Russian organized crime. After the impeachment Arturas Paulauskas, chairman of the Seimas, became acting president. Former president Valdas Adamkus won the special presidential election, with 30% of the vote in the first round on June 13 and 52% in the runoff on June 27.

The country’s first election to the European Parliament also took place on June 13. Five of the 13 MEP seats that Lithuania had been allocated were won by the newly established pro-Russia populist Labour Party. The Social Democrats, conservative Homeland Union, and Liberal and Centre Union (LCS) each captured two seats, with the Farmers Union and Paksas’s Liberal Democratic Party dividing the last two.

In June, Russia refused to make an apology for the occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and at the end of September, it surprisingly demanded $3 billion in compensation for its withdrawal from the Baltic States. In response, Vilnius reminded Moscow that damages during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania could be estimated at $27 billion. Lithuania’s GDP continued to grow beyond 7%, one of the fastest rates in the EU, while inflation remained low.

In Lithuania’s two-round general election, held on October 10 and 24, the Labour Party gained the most seats (39), followed by Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas’s ruling coalition (31), the Homeland Union (25), and the LCS (18). A left-wing coalition was formed, embracing Brazauskas’s coalition (comprising the Social Democrats and the Social Liberals), the Labour Party, and the Farmers Union.